Activists and medical sources in Aleppo said that over 100 civilians were killed and many more injured in the last 24 hours as dozens of airstrikes by the Russian and Assad regime air forces hit the besieged rebel-held parts of the city and its countryside.
Three rescue workers were injured while attempting to put out a fire in the neighborhood of Bustan Alqasr that was caused by the airstrikes.
Medics in the city talked about severe shortages of life-saving medicines, equipment, and blood bags. The field hospitals are being systematically targeted by the ongoing aerial campaign on eastern Aleppo.
France on Friday accused Bashar al-Assad and his allies of seeking to break Syria apart, as Russian-backed regime forces prepared to storm rebel-held eastern Aleppo.
The French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault was also critical of Washington, accusing it of excluding its allies from the diplomatic search for a solution to the conflict.
“In bombarding Aleppo, the regime is playing the card of a partition of Syria, and his allies are letting him get away with it,” he said at the United Nations.
Ayrault said Assad’s regime was trying to win sole control over the populous west of Syria, including Aleppo, Damascus and the Mediterranean coast. “The situation can fairly be called desperate,” he said.
“The negotiations between the Russians and the Americans are continuing, but they seem interminable,” Ayrault said, adding that the US has a “special responsibility.”
“It’s time to move to a more collective approach,” he declared.
The White House spokesman Josh Ernest on Friday described the fierce bombing of Aleppo as a development “that’s not welcome at all.”
President of the Arab Parliament Ahmed Al-Jarwan on Friday said that the activation of the truce on the ground requires a no-fly zone over all Syrian territory and stopping all forms of fighting. He called upon the international community to resume its moral responsibilities and stop the ongoing crimes against the Syrian people. (Source: Syrian Coalition + Agencies)
